dexterblog

I am disturbed by how many search engine results have come up with a link to this blog as a result of search terms using the word "anacephalic". There are no pictures of anacephalic babies here. Only examples of anacepalic aged care corporation mis-management, and here is the blog entry that sparked the association: Monday, February 23, 2004. My thoughts and blessings to mothers and fathers and families of disabled children. My heart goes out to you guys. My little fellow is doing much finer these days, it is more his mother who is now disabled. But gee we want to protect our children so much!

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.-Helen Keller

dexter 21:33 - [Link] - Comments ()
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I am so bored. I took the day off from work for a HIDA scan that I had to get done at the hospital. It's a scan they do when they are checking for gallbladder problems (gallstones), liver dysfunction etc. Got there at 1.45pm and left at 5.30pm. They were running an hour late. I had to lay still on a bed for 1.5 hours after getting injected with radioactive dye, then they injected me with cholecystokinin (a peptide hormone) to make the gallbladder contract. Cholecystokinin also makes the pancreas produce enzymes, which are some of the juices needed for the digestion of food and also increases the contractions of the stomach and intestines. All of this was done to hopefully stimulate/simulate a gallbladder attack - bloody charming! I was not impressed. In addition to this, the head unit of the scanning piece of furniture sat above my chin half an inch away (not good for claustrophobia) and I swear I could smell the odour of the previous occupant's fasting breath on it. The music they played was real weird. I think they tried to play something according to what they'd considered might be in the taste spectrum of the poor patient's age demographics. It was agony laying still for so long. I got the throat tickles, the urge to scratch, the dead tingly arm from the intravenous. My meditative zen thoughts flew out the window on that first floor procedure room. Now I have to stay away from close contact with kids for 24 hours post radioactive isotopes till they reach their half life - so you know anyone you wanna kill off with some radioactivity? Send me round their place!

The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage.-Mark Russell

dexter 20:57 - [Link] - Comments ()
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Oops! I fell asleep somewhere for about 5 months and they forgot to wake me! What did I miss ... A lot! Change of lifestyle (get thee off the net!) ... and change of purpose in life. Stop chasing after the past and future and go for the present. You can't take your belongings in the coffin with you. Time to hit the road soon.

Everybody sets out to do something, and everybody does something, but no one does what he sets out to do.-George A Moore

dexter 01:21 - [Link] - Comments ()
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I am getting more and more tired. Supposed to be going for check blood tests shortly, but to be honest I can't be bothered; and, I figure, what I don't know won't hurt me! The trip bush to the beach shack was brilliant as usual. Kids had a great time as usual, although both quadbikes had problems, we got a day's use out of them. And as usual none of us wanted to leave. It's been busy since getting back. I've lost some hours to import nurses from New Zealand. Such is the risk of working casually; here today, gone tomorrow. We should run a booking service to see how long they last before they move on, and I am called back. Ack. The bus plans have sort of come to a halt for a number of reasons, time, space, fiscal. I am wondering if we will ever get the thing up and fitted out and running. Planning to paint and redecorate the house some more soon. The toaster on steroids was sold about a week ago. I am surrounded by useful junk in this house I need to get rid of, there is no room to breathe.

No problem is too big to run away from.-Charles M Schulz

dexter 22:28 - [Link] - Comments ()
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Well almost time to go bush again. Taking the Landcruiser this time. I will miss my "girlylux" as she has become affectionately known. She's having a break and will be getting ready for some more modifications when I get home and when the tax refund cheque comes in. Looking at maybe another lift, limo tint and new stereo (the old one was trashed by the previous owner). B and J are most excited; the city kids that they are, the prospect of not showering for a week actually appeals to them. I've sliced my hair off as I do on a regular basis, to keep it short and sharp. Nothing worse than it growing to start falling again. The prednisone dose is slowly going down, starting 5mg tomorrow, a fairly amazing feat in itself, now into the third year of being steroid dependant. My knees will hold up as long as I don't lose my mind. I am getting more and more irritable. I am just fed up and tired. I want to retire. But then I guess I would be bored!

A man that does not know how to be angry does not know how to be good.
-Henry Ward Beecher

dexter 01:10 - [Link] - Comments ()
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It's been a couple of months since I last blogged. In that time I've fitted in some quality time-off with the kids, took a 4WD trip to a sea-side shanty town and placed an advertisement seeking a progressive family-friendly nursing home as a desperate measure to counteract the feeling of desperate nursing burn-out that I feel coming on. Progressive? It means you got the staff ratios covered properly and surgical stock on hand to do the work we do. Family-friendly? Means you are allowed to have holidays and that days off are sacred. I have a secret. I want to run away. And run away soon.

Wisdom comes by disillusionment.-George Santayana

dexter 02:19 - [Link] - Comments ()
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Not too impressed with the technician today doing the abdominal cat scan. My cats needed scanning. They've been causing too much abdominal pain lately. Took several attempts to butterfly the vein and get the contrast in. Big black bruises now.

The patient, treated on the fashionable theory, sometimes gets well in spite of the medicine.-Thomas Jefferson

dexter 01:31 - [Link] - Comments ()
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The Crappy Nursing Home Management in question "forced" all the RNs onto their Enterprise Bargaining Agreement which was approved last year. However, I am still wondering where I actually stand as I refused to sign the EBA, so am working under an agreement that I never agreed/consented to? How does a management get away with implementing an EBA that was never signed? And despite being supposedly permanent part time, my and other's RN hours have been slashed again. Is the nursing union planning to concentrate on these concerns for those of us in aged care. Or have we been forsaken?

I have received memos so swollen with managerial babble that they struck me as the literary equivalent of assault with a deadly weapon.-Peter Baida

dexter 01:17 - [Link] - Comments ()
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Economic rationalisation strikes again at work. Suddenly in the blink of an eye my shifts have been swiped. Someone has paid out and can tender at a lower price. Great! Within a day my joints have flared up and I can't weightbear on my right knee, my right wrist and elbow aches like crazy and the blood pressure went a bit odd. Stress related of course. Lowering the dose of prednisone doesn't help but it always becomes a case of the chicken or the egg syndrome. I have quite a collection now of "Letters to Crappy Nursing Home Management" related to various grievances and outrages. I'm thinking of publishing them on the net; they are kind of a snapshot of working life as an aged care nurse. We get such a bum rap.

The price of ability does not depend on merit, but on supply and demand.-George Bernard Shaw

dexter 01:28 - [Link] - Comments ()
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Hmm, well managed to alienate half of the family tree today. All over the fixing of a tacky D-grade computer that really should be put out to pasture, buried under a tree somewhere where the dog can pee on it. Something for nothing is fair enough, but when the only phone call you get is a yearly call for "my chat programs won't work!" help without much of a "hello how are you" thrown in as a customary greeting, it does get a bit annoying. Why not ask the obviously competent usual computer technician jock that managed to leave the floppy disk drive unplugged and thereby disabled for $50 an hour?

Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.-Pablo Picasso

dexter 12:14 - [Link] - Comments ()
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They know I have no agenda or political or professional ambitions at work, except to do a fair day's work for a fair day's pay, so I can have a lot of fun invigorating things up behind the scene and empowering the other staff who do run into problems, get ripped off, or really feel the urge, to make a difference. I have got at least a minimum of 30 years more in my chosen speciality, so not keen to burn myself out yet! I think a lot of people don't know how to get organised, as in unionized. It's quite fun. Tonight a patient told me to f..k off and another one nearly hit me with his fist in my face whilst I was trying to give him his analgesia. Well, you can't argue with a disease, the disease being dementia. I made an omelette tonight. It was a beauty, but wish I hadn't eaten it. I chickened out on my endoscopy the other week. I don't sedate easily but I will have to go get it done. Omelette should not make you double up in pain and feel like retching.

A diplomat is a man who thinks twice before he says nothing.-Frederick Sawyer

dexter 01:33 - [Link] - Comments ()
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The winds of change are a-blowing as the old saying goes. There is something definitive in this warm breezy day today. Far too nice to go drone with the clones at work. But I will. After all, I had an industrial win this morning, and hence I don't feel totally justified to withdraw my labour for the interim. Did that make sense? Probably not. I got caught out in the sun on Saturday, which brought on the most delightfully drunken flare symptoms so common with my expression of lupus. I'm just getting back to normal now. I'm cheap to get drunk. Just shove me out in the sun for an hour on a bright warm day and I will be staggering and slurring speech in no time flat. Darn those cellular reactions with those rogue antibodies.

Suffering isn't ennobling, recovery is.-Christiaan Barnard

dexter 01:11 - [Link] - Comments ()
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Never, ever, ever, try to cook frozen veal schnitzel in a George Foreman griller. It tastes too strange.

Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.-Mark Twain

dexter 01:08 - [Link] - Comments ()
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The work on the bus we are doing up to become a motor home is going slowly but steadily. For those who aren't up to date, some months back we bought a really cheap old MTT Hino bus, the sort with the old green vinyl bench seats, about 40 foot long. It was owned by the driver of the bus when he was working for the local government public transport company, and when they were selling off the old fleet, he bought it. After pulling out all the bench seats and filling in some windows, we are now putting in carpet and sourcing parts for it to do it up in a motor home fashion. One day, it will have sleeping arrangements for 4 people, a kitchen with stove/fridge/microwave, bathroom (toilet/shower/handbasin), small lounge and eating area and a small computer area as well and a few more bits and pieces. With any luck there will also be a sun deck on the roof, in a Priscilla Queen of the Desert fashion!

Thanks to the interstate highway system, it is now possible to travel across the country coast to coast without seeing anything.-Charles Kuralt

dexter 01:22 - [Link] - Comments ()
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I have perfected the art of writing the "Killer Letter". One of the wonderfully progressive aged care organisations that I work for (who shan't be named but we know who they are!) never ceases to amaze me what low levels it will stoop to, to avoid PAYING salaries to its staff. In as many months, there have been four major occasions of foul play. Changing of contract conditions without notifying the employee (Hey! That's me! You just slashed my hours and changed my award conditions illegally!) Non-payment of superannuation according to the prescribed lawful requirements. Non-payment of annual leave/days off that were approved by management. And twice, non-payment of paid meal breaks as per award/enterprise bargaining agreements and conditions for those RNs of us who work the evening shifts and are required to be on site and available. Aged care nursing is really hard work as we know, but no where near as hard as taking on anacephalic management that quite frankly, don't know their own enterprise bargain agreement conditions if they hit themselves over the head! Why do I stay? Probably because I still manage to have a whole lot of fun, even during trying times like these. Stay tuned, you may yet see my story in a state-wide Australian newspaper yet.

I am a man, not a consignment of goods to be bought and sold.-Curtis Flood

dexter 01:08 - [Link] - Comments ()
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Well this week is flying by fast, it's incredible to think that this time last week I was dying on the bed with a good dose of gastroenteritis courtesy of one of my workplaces. I thought I was going to die. It was violent. All upwards and nothing downwards. Heck, it beat the Atkins diet hands down; lose 2 kilograms in 24 hours! Fortunately G and Roper the Dog were left unscathed. I was given a cow bell to ring if I "really" needed anything, and left to wallow around the bed. On the third day, I arose, crawled into the Hyundai Excel (an amazing toaster on steroids) and drove and drove and then bought a Toyota Hilux Surf. Good old imports, you either love them or hate them, but you can't beat them! It's a 1995 SSRX-Limited Edition. I can rattle off all the specs just like any respectable motorhead! Change your car and change your life! Grab an attitude! Experience more difficulties parking your truck at work's sardine car lot. Err, no, that's a car plot. Dual batteries, ARB all steel bullbar, reese hitch towbar, Safari snorkle, sunroof, full electrics, nice stereo with lots of bass, Old Man Emu suspension with Nitro shockies, 2 inch lift, 2 1/2 inch exhaust system that makes just enough grunty purr to let me know where the rear end of this piece of diesel turbo-powered machinery is! I think I just gave birth to my latest baby.

To do nothing is also a good remedy.-Hippocrates

dexter 02:11 - [Link] - Comments ()
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Today I am going to write a little palaver on lupus. Systemic Lupus Erythematosus, actually. It can be an appalling condition to have. Sometimes I really hate it. It has the capability of severely restricting your physical state of health and state of mind. I am not writing this as a "woe is me" type dialogue but rather as a "this is in my face and if it was in more people's faces then maybe more would be done to find a way to cure and control it better". I won't try to explain in detail about lupus, you can go here, here, and here to read up more about it. Please do. Geographically where I am, 1 in 2000 are diagnosed with this condition at any point in time, yet so little is known about it. In 12 years of nursing, it is only in the past year or so I have looked after 2 patients with it. A list of complaints that I have about my choice of disease. My children are growing up and becoming their own people while I am sometimes relegated to the daybed for days. My pharmacy bills some weeks are higher than my food bills. I can't go out and enjoy the sun. Not even in the cooler part of the day. Those UV rays are out there everywhere. Even the flurorescent light in my kitchen can render me drunken and cognitively impaired. I am tired of aching joints, high fevers, shortness of breath, icky face rashes, receding gums, patchy hair loss, headaches that last for 3 days; tired of being tired.

Reality is just a crutch for people who can't cope with drugs.-Lily Tomlin

dexter 18:08 - [Link] - Comments ()
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Our bathroom taps make a huge elephant type screeching noise, that is how B woke me up this morning; with an elephant in labour. Lately I have been spending about 75% of my time on the daybed in the lounge. It is a good place to be. Except when the masses arrive home. A hot day expected today.

Our ability to create has outreached our ability to use wisely the products of our invention.-Whitney Moore Young Jr

dexter 11:48 - [Link] - Comments ()
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Well our household here survived Christmas and New Year. And the very best wishes to you and yours! B had a 9 year old birthday party somewhere in the middle of it all. I am still chasing the kids down at the park on their scooters.

I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it's hell.-Harry S Truman

dexter 03:55 - [Link] - Comments ()
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It's almost time to split this place for a while. The drone is at risk of cloning.

The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land. It is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land.-GK Chesterton

dexter 01:15 - [Link] - Comments ()
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Back again. Drama today in our normally quiet neighbourhood which unfolded this morning, we listened on the scanner. Road blockade, lots of helicopters flying overhead and plain-clothes police zooming by, shouting at us to stay indoors. They captured the gunman, who appears to have shot one person and taken several hostages over the period. The story is here.

Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos.-Will Durant

dexter 21:43 - [Link] - Comments ()
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Current reading from the green library bag.
"Elder care strategies: expert care plans for older adults." B Belza, C Brady, B Broome et al. 2002. Lippincott Williams and Wilkins. ISBN: 1-58255-184-7.

Hello! Just popping in for a moment. Scanned in some pictures of Roper the Dog which look quite insane. Still messing around with the home page. It is like a third-rate nightmare horror movie, it just never seems to quite get the plot.

Flops are a part of life's menu and I've never been a girl to miss out on any of the courses.-Rosalind Russell

dexter 03:40 - [Link] - Comments ()
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Well yes, it has been 16 days since I posted. I kind of fell off the edge of the world as we know it for a little while there. Meaning school holiday craziness, adverse drug reaction to new medication, issues with work, issues at home. B has had a recurrence of his obsessive-compulsive disorder. He is handwashing like there is no tomorrow to get rid of "contamination". This is a real issue in a child of 8. Is this part of his Asperger's Syndrome flaring up or something else? A trip to the pediatrician is on the horizon. Behaviour and medication management in OCD is one thing when it is older people you work with for a living. But when it is your own child things just go a little hazy. The shadows in the park this past week have been long. It has also been pretty nippy cold too. The lake is full and the ducks are all there. Young J can make it all the way across the flying fox, she has grown so much. I rang someone I regard as a very dear friend of mine today who lives in Canada. It was great to talk to J, touch base and just banter and complain about the usual things. Not that I had a lot of positive stuff to say, but I think that was OK.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.-Kahlil Gibran

dexter 23:43 - [Link] - Comments ()
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It has been another terribly hectic week leading up to school holidays. Double shifts and extremely lousy weather; rain and wind. Running away for a couple of days. See you when I get back.

When the whistle blew and the call stretched thin across the night, one had to believe that any journey could be sweet to the soul.-Charles Turner

dexter 02:47 - [Link] - Comments ()
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Current reading from the green library bag.
"The making and breaking of the australian family." M Gilding. 1991. Allen and Unwin. ISBN: 0-04-442348-9.

Crazy shift work hours lately. Extremely busy. Lots of liason with family and residents. Not enough hours in the day. Joints ache tonight. Feeling dehydrated. Waiting for news on grandmother's funeral.

Other things may change us, but we start and end with the family.-Anthony Brandt

dexter 23:03 - [Link] - Comments ()
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Current reading from the green library bag.
"Thriving in 24/7: six strategies for taming the new world of work." S Helgesen. 2001. Nicholas Brealey Publishing. ISBN: 1-85788-307-1.

It is encouraging when the kids ask to go to the library. I had almost thought that kind of thing had died. There is a skateboard rink near the library, but I figured it couldn't be that as it was pouring down with rain. Perhaps it is part of the growth spurt thing that B and J are both going through at the moment. This time last year, I was working up to a 45 to 50 hour week, double shifts, split shifts, shifts on call on days off, etc. And it's been four years since I had a holiday. It just occurred to me no wonder I was feeling tired.

I am not young enough to know everything.-James M. Barrie

dexter 01:21 - [Link] - Comments ()
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The call came last evening, as we were preparing a lamb casserole and making lemon and poppyseed muffins. Grandmother has passed away. She celebrated her 100th birthday in May, so she had a more than fairly good innings. Her passing was comfortably brief. I wish it were the same for some of my residents I care for at work. It was only the evening shift before death became familial in our household again, that one of the residents told me she thought palliative care meant "you get knocked out". Oops. Sounds like there needs to be a whole lot more community education on this one!

Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.-W. H. Auden

dexter 10:57 - [Link] - Comments ()
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It is difficult, being the organised specimen that I am. Life gets a bit boring and too efficient. And for today, that is all I have to say.

The only difference between a rut and a grave is their dimensions.-Ellen Glasgow

dexter 02:22 - [Link] - Comments ()
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Time flies! I've been busy doing a whole lot of nothing. Well, actually really something constructive. Reading, working and dreaming. And catching up with good friends. Also been updating B's home page on Asperger's Syndrome. When I have finished, remind me and I will post the web page address for it. Counting down to the school holidays when I can take a week off and kick back and enjoy the hyperactive and bored kids roaming the house and streets!

I am always quarreling with time! It is so short to do something and so long to do nothing.-Queen Charlotte

dexter 04:05 - [Link] - Comments ()
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The mouse that ate the network cable by crawling through the wall cavity and through my bookshelf of nursing literature, is back. I hope it's not hungry tonight. Very cold tonight. Date loaf with custard for dessert. Spent a most sticky evening glueing landmarks of Australia made out of rocks, cellophane and an unknown sandy substance to B's cardboard poster school project. He had a difference of opinion with the teacher; that Bondi Beach was an Australian landmark. She reckoned it wasn't. We reckoned it was more than a landmark, a true icon indeed. Western Australia, sadly, was lacking, just stuck right out there. I was kind of hoping we could fashion a Wave Rock out of pipecleaners and tissue paper. Perhaps next term. Oh. Divorce absolute arrived in the mail yesterday afternoon, on a yellow piece of paper. Exactly 12 years, 6 months and 2 days since I plunged into marriage, as now I fall out of it. I love even numbers.

Nature works on a method of all for each and each for all.-Ralph Waldo Emerson

dexter 01:57 - [Link] - Comments ()
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It was a traumatic evening the night before last at work. All the staff took turns at jumping on the electronic chair scales to find we had each respectively put on approximately 6kg a piece. It's funny that. We go to work, work insanely busy antisocial hours, hit the floor running. I don't even get time to get to the bathroom at work most days. I finish the end of the shift with an abdomen that screams acute retention looking about 7 months pregnant. This is not setting a good example as an ex urology nurse.

We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over.-Aneurin Bevan

dexter 04:10 - [Link] - Comments ()
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Well, just realised it has been about 13 days since I last posted. I got a little busy with life and sleeping. I love my sleep. Work has also been incredibly busy too. I have started messing around making a home page, in addition to this mish-mash here. Hopefully, I will be able to do something a little more inspiring with it, than what I can here. Bargain of the year was found this week too. Floorboards at half price. Granted a few good roast dinners and I may well have the manpower to install them too.

It is much easier to be critical than to be correct.-Benjamin Disraeli

dexter 01:09 - [Link] - Comments ()
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Current reading from the green library bag.
"Elder abuse: critical issues in policy and practice." P Slater and M Eastman. 1999. Age Concern. ISBN: 0-86242-248-5.

Outside, I hear a humming. Can't decide if it is frogs buzzing or a poorly tuned radio. I am suffering terrible insomnia again tonight. I light a candle to light my spirits. It is the end of a very hard working week again. The accumulation of many busy days. The two days off, sacred with children in the house and making cakes and pottering around beckons.

I was unrecognizable to myself. I saw my reflection in a window. I didn't know my own face.-Bruce Springsteen

dexter 00:59 - [Link] - Comments ()
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Current reading from the green library bag.
"Bury me standing: the gypsies and their journey." I Fonseca. 1995. Random House. ISBN: 0-7011-3851-3.

Fire extinguisher training last week at work was most eventful. The birds in the courtyard aviary found themselves nuked by foam powder. The stupidity of some people. It didn't help the recuperating pleuritic registered nurse either, come to think of it.

Whatever your advice, make it brief.-Horace

dexter 02:17 - [Link] - Comments ()
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Well nothing a week or two on antibiotics won't fix. Now I know how people who have been stabbed with blunt bread and butter knives feel. I can breathe out but not breathe in.

Bed is the perfect climate.-Noel Coward

dexter 01:04 - [Link] - Comments ()
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Current reading from the green library bag.
"Getting things done when you are not in charge." G M Bellman. 1992. Berrett-Koehler Publishers Inc. ISBN: 1-881052-02-8.

Hope this gives me some ideas. I am in a crisis with work. It is a love-hate relationship, and an extremely frustrating one. I have just come inside from sitting on the porch. This is my favourite activity at any time of the day or night. I like to watch the world go by. It has just occurred to me over the past few months of this daily ritual that where I live is fairly in the middle of the flight path of both the national and international airports. Not so close to get the sonic boom as they fly over, so to speak, but close enough for the planes to fly by and for me to see their white shark-like bellies. Actually, I should probably stop sitting outside at night for the moment. My head cold I have had for the past few days has developed into left sided chest pain when I breathe in and move around or cough. Pleurisy is one of the manifestations of my lupus. It is no fun at all. I am going to try and ignore it tonight and deal with it tomorrow.

The secret of managing is to keep the guys who hate you away from the guys who are undecided.-Casey Stengel

dexter 01:15 - [Link] - Comments ()
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It has been a very up and down start to the week and now it is already Thursday. Where has the week gone? The headaches have returned, I have had to take time away from work and life. Currently I have one of those head colds that seem to be going around at the moment. Incredible vertigo with it. Cancel the rest of the week methinks. "Cognitive Dysfunction in CNS Systemic Lupus Erythematosus"; interesting article today's reading matter. I am concerned; I have noted an increase in cognitive dysfunction. Every fourth word is a "thingy". I can't remember a number of words, even though they are familiar to me. It is a very strange way to be.

Minds are like parachutes: they only function when open.-Thomas R Dewar

dexter 00:47 - [Link] - Comments ()
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I realised this afternoon, when I got home from work and logged on to the net, how behind times in all things technological I have become. Google Search in Klingon is freely available as well as a variety of other alternative languages.

The presence of humans, in a system containing high-speed electronic computers and high-speed accurate communications, is quite inhibiting.-Stuart Luman Seaton

dexter 18:23 - [Link] - Comments ()
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Big meeting. Big words and big complaints. I have a lot to learn from these wonderful strong wise women I work with, on how to have a constructive bitch-fest.

It aint easy being green.-Kermit the Frog

dexter 01:03 - [Link] - Comments ()
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Most long and interesting day yesterday, Friday, which kind of ran smack-bang into today, Saturday. Spent most of the day helping H prepare her poster presentation on breast cancer; yesterday was also her last day of chemotherapy for her own breast cancer. Messing around on the computer and cutting up pieces of paper and stuff we spent a fun day making rude jokes and insinuations. Her last assignment for her Masters of Public Health had been on lupus; we joke that she has to take a break from the serious diseases, as no one in our family can afford to catch anything else just to help her research her course work!

Not a shred of evidence occurs in favour of the idea that life is serious.-Brendan Gill

Couldn't sleep still, so wandered outside. Been pretty windy wet weather past day or so. Now still as peace. Except for the tinny ping-pong of G playing D-Grade Foxtel games on the television. Bright full moon, means havoc at work tomorrow.

dexter 03:04 - [Link] - Comments ()
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Current reading from the green library bag.
"You must see some terrible things: australian ambulance officers at work." 1999. P Kennedy. Kangaroo Press. ISBN: 0-7318-0765-0.

Phone call regarding divorce proceedings. All went through in twenty seconds. No problems. Happy Divorce Day. Yippee!!! Now bury nose again in green library bag and read about other people's mishaps and misfortunes, and forget your own for a while.

Marriage is our last, best chance to grow up.-Joseph Barth

dexter 03:03 - [Link] - Comments ()
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Oh yes. I forgot! I'm getting divorced today!

A divorce is like an amputation. You survive, but there's less of you.-Margaret Atwood

dexter 05:29 - [Link] - Comments ()
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Back to normality slowly. Survived birthday party, it was a small blast. Might be some very good photos in there. We have a family tradition; you have to sing Happy Birthday till every kid gets a chance in the hot birthday seat and the chance to blow the candles out. Yes, they get re-lit. Sometimes, many times. Go figure. Also recovering from a quick trip to the hospital on Sunday evening. You missed that one didn't you! I'm nursing a sore hand from the IV still. Awake now at 4am because my prednisone has finally kicked in. Got prednisone munchies. What poor soul felt tortured so as to go buy unsalted peanut butter? Migraines that last for four days are no fun indeed.

The guest is always right-even if we have to throw him out.-Charles Ritz

dexter 05:23 - [Link] - Comments ()
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I have spent more time in bed the past four days than I have the past four weeks it feels. And it is still not enough. Lupus can produce the most incredible fatigue. It is more than usual fatigue or tiredness. This is stuff that totally knocks you out cold. I feel like an elephant sat on me and pummelled me into the ground. Head foggy, body foggy, weak and wishy washy. Oh for the joy of getting ready for daughter's seventh birthday today. Chocolate birthday cake is on the menu along with chinese style chicken wings, encapsulated in a rich sauce of honey, soy, sesame seed oil, steamed white rice, grain perfect, complemented with fresh carrots and green beans. In the meantime I have booked off work for the rest of the week.

I'm going to be an unhappy idiot and struggle for the legal tender.-Jackson Browne

dexter 15:47 - [Link] - Comments ()
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If I look confused it's because I'm thinking.-Samuel Goldwyn

dexter 23:14 - [Link] - Comments ()
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Woke with a headache that started last night. The headache may last three days if it is one of my average headaches. Roper the Dog had his dog bath this morning. He smells like apple scented laundry detergent now. All we need now are some dog mints for his breath. Roper and I have a lot in common. Stay tuned and you will find out why.

I am not an early riser. The self-respect which other men enjoy in rising early I feel due to me for waking up at all.-William Gerhardt

dexter 12:09 - [Link] - Comments ()
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Ok. Think I figured this out now. You know, orange is a really good colour for contrast at 3am in the morning when you are having the sweats and are a bit jumpy from lack of sleep. Why the lack of sleep? Lots of reasons, all quite legitimate and legal.

dexter 03:57 - [Link] - Comments ()
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Uh I hate Fridays. Means I have to get out of bed.

dexter 13:50 - [Link] - Comments ()
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